Addressing the risks of fraud and corruption against the Commonwealth is crucial to the Australian Government. This report presents the results from the 2024–25 census on fraud against the Commonwealth, which collected responses from 162 Australian Government entities. Most external frauds where the allegation was substantiated targeted program payments.

This report examines Commonwealth offences sentenced in Victoria’s adult courts in the five years to 30 June 2023. It identifies the agencies that prosecuted Commonwealth offences, the demographics of federal offenders, the sentence types imposed for Commonwealth offences and the most commonly sentenced Commonwealth offences in Victoria.

This report combines Commonwealth, state and territory budget data to examine the fiscal outlook across all levels of Australian government. Compared to the 2024-25 outlook, all the main budget aggregates have worsened as a share of gross domestic product at the national level. This reflects a deterioration in these aggregates across most jurisdictions.

Horizontal fiscal equalisation has been a core concept for Australia in one form or another since Federation. This occasional paper explores whether the GST distribution system is too complex. It finds there is a trade-off between assessing states’ relative fiscal capacities as comprehensively as possible and simplifying assessment methods.

This report presents the results from the 2023–24 Fraud against the Commonwealth census and the measures taken to prevent, detect or respond to fraud. Australian Government entities detected or received 288,808 allegations of fraud in 2023–24. Program information and program payments were the principal targets of substantiated internal and external fraud allegations respectively.